Trouble dual booting Windows 10 ... PC keeps restarting.

JustAnotherSaver

So I went ahead with the Windows 10 install but it's gone wrong somehow & i'm wondering how to fix it.

I disconnected ALL drives with the exception of the new 1TB SSD. I booted to the USB stick with Windows 10 on it & accessed the drive for a clean install. 
I then partitioned it off as I wanted and installed Windows 10 to the smaller of the larger of the 2 partitions first (apparently this is called volume 2). It got up & running.
I then booted to the USB stick again, installed Windows 10 to the smaller of the 2 partitions (called volume 3).


Once I had done this I started updating (I didn't have the ethernet cable plugged in initially). While it was updating, I ran cmd to edit bcdedit as per instructions here https://www.top-password.com/blog/windows-10-how-to-change-os-name-in-dual-boot-menu/. My aim was to rename the 2 Windows 10 installs to something more easily identifiable. 
Please let's forget for the purpose of this thread why there's 2x Windows 10 installs on the same drive. I did this with Windows 7 & was told that it could work on Windows 10.

Now when I boot to Volume 3 … the smaller partition, absolutely no problem.
However whenever I boot to Volume 2, the larger partition, the PC restarts again and THEN accesses Windows, so it's basically a really long startup process. I don't get the dual boot screen twice, I only get it once, I select what is Volume 3, the PC just restarts, goes through everything as it would on a normal startup and then accesses the Volume 3 disk … starting that Windows up.

So obviously what I want to know is A) why is it restarting when it shouldn't & also Volume 2 doesn't and B] how do I stop it from restarting? 


EDIT: If it helps any then I just went in to msconfig and changed the default boot drive and then rebooted. 

After this, the drive that started up perfectly fine beforehand now restarts before eventually booting to Windows and the drive that restarted the PC now actually boots to Windows perfectly fine. 

Neil_Jones

What you actually want is a multi-boot configuration.  Dual-boot is designed for multiple operating systems, say Windows 7 and Windows 10, or Windows 10 and some flavour of Linux. and this is easy to achieve (for two different versions of Windows you just install the older version first and then the later one and it takes care of itself.  Same for Linux, install Windows first and then your distro of preference and GRUB or whatever will take care of it).. This process is not really designed for two versions of the same operating system, though some people have had success.

Multi-boot, however, is a pain in the backside as it requires custom bootloaders, which Windows has never been any good at because they all assume they will be the only operating system on the drive.  Advances in technology and "secure boot" muddy the waters somewhat, plus when Windows does its twice yearly massive update it's almost certainly going to break both installations booting.

The easiest solution, if not the most practical, is to install Windows on two different drives and then change the boot order in the BIOS to always boot from one.  If you need the other one you can just change it on a per boot basis typically by pressing ESC, F11, F12 or whatever combination you need, to select the other drive.

The other alternative is a Virtual Machine, so you only need the one Windows 10 and the other runs inside Virtualbox or similar programs. that you can get.

JustAnotherSaver

Virtual Machine,

That one wont be happening. Not really a fan of those. Been there, tried it, don't like it.

This process is not really designed for two versions of the same operating system,

See when I saw this, I was going to question you as to how for the past 10 years I have comfortably ran the exact same Windows 7 dual booted (or multi booted, whichever is the correct term). I have formatted and reinstalled in those 10 years numerous times and never had an issue.

But then I saw you say this...

The easiest solution, if not the most practical, is to install Windows on two different drives and then change the boot order in the BIOS to always boot from one. 

And I realised there is actually a difference, although I didn't think it would matter.

With my Windows 7 setup, I had 2 different physical drives. I would install Windows 7 to the Samsung SSD and Windows 7 (exact same key btw, so when I say same, I mean exact same) to the Seagate SSHD drive - so 2 different physical drives.

I would then use EasyBCD to rename the partitions so they weren't just both called Windows 7 Pro (so I could rename them Bill & Ben if you like) and i'd set one of them as default … and THAT worked.

This time round on Windows 10, I partitioned off 1 drive. I didn't think it would matter as I thought the PC would 'see' it as 2 different drives since it's 2 different partitions, but as it's 1 physical drive, is this likely to be the cause of the problem? Or should that not matter and the cause is likely to be something else? Maybe Windows 10 is different in that way? Though I've seen images online of a dual (or multi) Windows 10 boot which suggests it can/should work.

Neil_Jones

Windows 10 creates extra partitions as part of installation, as opposed to Windows 7 which only creates two - the 100Mb Reserved and the main one.

More recent versions of Windows 10 now create an extra partition to "aid" recovery and if you're using an older style of booting (such as the Master Boot Record which was the standard for many years) doing what you're doing may push you over that limit.  The more modern style (GPT) doesn't have this but of course requires compatible hardware.

You might do better to install Windows from scratch again but don't do the partitioning yourself.  Let Windows do what it wants, then you can shrink the main Windows partition down in Computer Management and then try to install the second copy into the now unallocated space.

If you have no joy with this then the two physical hard drives solution is probably the easiest going forward.

JustAnotherSaver

While waiting on a response this morning I just started again and formatted the entire drive. The only differences I did this time were:
1) Have ethernet cable plugged in throughout
2) I didn't mess around with bcdedit in cmd prompt.

Probably no surprise to you but it's no different. I was hoping messing with bcdedit may have ballsed it up but alas. 

I went in to disk management:



That's what it looks like (that's with me creating the partitions first).

I'll do as you say and just install Windows to the drive, shrink the volume and create a new partition that way. If that's no good then i'll try installing the second one to a second physical drive. I wasn't wanting to do that but hopefully one of those will work.

JustAnotherSaver

Well i'm done now. I've tried and tried and still no joy...

* I tried the above and was hoping that it was playing with bcdedit that messed things up so I started again. Sadly that wasn't the case. 

* I tried again without messing with bcdedit - same issue. 

* I tried formatting the SSD to a whole partition, installed Windows 10 to it, went in to disk management, shrunk the volume and then installed Windows 10 to the  newly created volume - same issue.  

* I then tried installing to the SSD as a whole partition, I connected a second HDD and then installed Windows 10 to that drive too - same issue once again. One Windows 10 will start perfectly fine whereas the other will restart the PC and THEN start Windows. 

There surely has to be a way of doing it, it's just a case of how. Thankfully I didn't erase my Windows 7 disks so I can actually get back to using the PC while I wait on another possible fix. 

anotherquestion

I have dual boot with windows 7 and 10. I use EasyBCD free all the time to point to the other OS if something goes wrong, use the free version from this site.
https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
You did say that windows starts to load on it and then fails, which to me seems some sort of problem with that install.

JustAnotherSaver

anotherquestion said:

I have dual boot with windows 7 and 10. I use EasyBCD free all the time to point to the other OS if something goes wrong, use the free version from this site.
https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
You did say that windows starts to load on it and then fails, which to me seems some sort of problem with that install.

I used EasyBCD to sort out my 2 Windows7 installs. It's a nice program. Allowed me to rename the partitions to the persons name and sort the boot order.

Sadly it seems installing Windows 7 twice on the same computer is ok but doing the exact same with Windows 10 is a no-go. At least for now until someone comes in with a suggestion. I actually tried EasyBCD with the 2 Windows 10 installs ... it didn't help.

With your last comment - not necessarily. So let's say i installed 2 Windows 10 installs side by side on the same machine. 2 partitions but same machine right? Let's say i renamed them Bill and Ben.

Bill was default. It would boot to Bill partition no problem but when i tried to load Ben's partition it would restart the machine before finally loading Ben's partition.

However

If i then switched the defaults so that Ben was now default then Ben's partition would boot fine (whereas before it wouldn't) but now Bill's partition would be the one that restarts the PC before finally booting to Windows.

If that makes sense to some of you tech whizzes then i'd really appreciate some help.

As it is though, i could run Windows 7 alongside Windows 10 and see if that works. I could try eBay for a key. I would rather not run Windows 7 alongside 10 but i could do it at a push if this Windows 10 setup was a no go.

Neil_Jones

Actually thinking about it, Fast Startup could be something else to look at.

in Windows 10, this is basically hibernation in new colours, so it may well be that it knows that the Fast Startup hibernation file from the previous session doesn't match the existing one so what it'll do is purge it and restart.  I wouldn't be surprised if its the same file being used across both sessions.

Worth a shot, here's how you turn it off (do it on both installs):

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-windows-10-fast-startup

JustAnotherSaver

Neil_Jones said:

Actually thinking about it, Fast Startup could be something else to look at.

in Windows 10, this is basically hibernation in new colours, so it may well be that it knows that the Fast Startup hibernation file from the previous session doesn't match the existing one so what it'll do is purge it and restart.  I wouldn't be surprised if its the same file being used across both sessions.

Worth a shot, here's how you turn it off (do it on both installs):

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-windows-10-fast-startup

And this would apply even with restarting the PC? I would've thought that anything saved or whatever wouldn't matter, as the PC has been restarted, so that on startup the computer will be looking in which direction to be pointed rather than actually having some sort of memory that says i remember i was here or i remember that this that and the other.

Obviously if that isn't the case, my lack of knowledge right there will be obvious and laughable.

I packed everything up last night as i honestly didn't think we would get anywhere. lol. I'll have a shot at this to see if it fixes anything and i'll let you know. Thanks for the tip.

As a last resort, i tested out a Win7 install and the spare key i have activated. So as a last resort scenario i could dual boot Windows 7 and Windows 10 though i would rather not.

JustAnotherSaver

Ok well i tried it out.

Sadly it didn't work. Still the same issue. One partition works perfectly fine, the other restarts the machine and then boots to Windows.

For the record i tried these on the exact same drive, not two separate physical drives but the exact same 1TB SSD drive, just partitioned.

Thanks for the time you've spent. If you or anyone else can think of any other reason why it's not working or how we could get it to work then suggestions are welcome and i'll try them out. If i move to Windows 10 i can go today and get it set up, but at the moment that's looking not possible so for now it'll be a Win7 & Win10 dual boot (assuming that wont present the same problem) and for that i will need to sort through my hoard with a finer toothed comb. In other words, i have time to wait on more suggestions. Thank you.